UploadVR’s 2016 Game of the Year Winners

Last week we announced a comprehensive list of nominees for our 2016 Game of the Year Awards. There were over 20 categories selected with approximately 4-8 different games and experiences nominated for each category. That all adds up to a ton of amazing content we saw in VR’s first full year of consumer adoption.

We teamed up with the prolific Christopher Sabat (the voice of Piccolo, Yamcha, and of course Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z as well as Roronoa Zoro in One Piece) to record a video announcing each winner in every category. In my opinion, getting a glimpse of gameplay combined with that epic voice is absolutely the best way to experience our award selections. Check it out:

Since there were so many categories to decide and so many voices to hear, we actually had a true deliberation process in real-time using AltspaceVR. That means for three hours I, the Games Editor at UploadVR, Staff Writer Joe Durbin, Staff Writer Jamie Feltham, and Senior Editor Ian Hamilton, all discussed the nominees and who we thought deserved to win each and every category. That entire process was recorded, so get your popcorn ready.

We know it is three hours long, at the very least the first 25 or so minutes are pretty funny. The whole thing is embedded below.

We also have the third, and quickest, way to digest our selections and that’s in plain old text format.

Absolutely! There’s a reason is took us three hours in Altspace to decide all of these haha

lostformofvr

Sorry, but i totally disagree with a lot of winners. The result doesn’t represent the best games/experiences/apps of 2016. You must improve the process to chose the winners, if you want to be taken seriously.

So true! I think a much more comprehensive and objective results would be to ask the community and do proper voting. Sure, there will be platform wars, but you could specify the platform and sort out the votes accordingly to multi-platform titles and exclusives. Also a tricky question is how to work out the titles that can be played using ReVive.. cuz SuperhotVR and DirtVR are my top picks probably although I own a Vive.

Cyanhyde

Looks like I’ve got a bunch of titles to try out.

BooBoo65

Thumper was too basic to be fun for me. It also seemed more like a vehicle that was stationary and a moving ground underneath than what was intended in the animation

I just can’t believe thumper is anywhere close to being tops, but I know a lot disagree.

James Friedman

It’s still a pretty crazy experience though and very unique.

Kenny

How can Arizona Sunshine win game of the year and lose best rift game.

Scott C

It seems obvious that an editorial decision was made that the game of the year could not be a platform exclusive, to avoid a political explosion. Perhaps more charitably, accessibility was given consideration, but if that’s the case, they should have said so when introducing the list. Of course, neither interpretation stopped TiltBrush, so maybe there’s some anti-Rift bias lurking beneath the surface.

Honestly, I’m fairly disappointed that nothing was written about the entries to explain the rationale behind each. A straight list of things read dryly and comes off as lazy, low-hanging filler.

John Cruddas

My thoughts (from the reddit thread).
I know opinions are subjective and these lists will always be different for everyone so let me preface this by saying I realize the stupidity of picking at other peoples lists, but at the end of the day, thats kinda what these lists are for right? So…

What were you guys smoking?

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AS over Superhot? Just no!

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If Onward is the best shooter, and Arizona Sunshine is a shooter. How is Sunshine the game of the year? That makes no sense!

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Shoehorning Superhot into the “Puzzle” genre is really a stretch. Onward also has some ‘thinking’ tactical elements, does that make it a puzzle game too?

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Tiltbrush over Quill?? The two are so similar but Quill just offers so much more refinement and artistic possibilities. This is one place where I believe subjectivity can be thrown out of the window. As art software, Quill is *objectively* better than tiltbrush.

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I think maybe you guys went out of your way to avoid the drama that may have resulted from putting platform exclusives as your top picks. That is admirable in a way, but really, imo, awards should not be politically motivated and should just highlight what is BEST out there.

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Edit – Also you got into a platform mess anyway by listing Arizona Sunshine as the best Vive game. It is multi-platform. If it is best Vive game, and best VR game, how is Unspoken the best Rift game, when you can play Sunshine on Rift? You should have kept the best games for each platform limited to exclusives, or just not bothered with it at all.

Edit 2 – Read a little further down. Altspace over Recroom is also criminal. Just hanging out socially in VR with complete strangers is weird and a little creepy. Recroom gives distractions and the games do a great job of breaking the ice. Its a far better social experience imo.

Edit 3 – Could you not have created a category in there for Google Earth VR to win? It is widely regarded as one of the most incredible, almost trans-formative, experiences in VR. Not a single mention in your awards.

wjb

Maybe no Google Earth b/c a lot of people (myself included) couldn’t get it to run before 2017. But it’s truly transformative for sure.

James Friedman

I still haven’t found a game that looks as good as Until Dawn Rush of Blood on PSVR. It’s both a crazy rollercoaster and shooting gallery that scares the shit out of you. I forget the writers of upload don’t like jump scares 🙂 The only thing I felt that was similar was the new game Ghost Town Mine Ride on steam. Still the mechanics and graphics aren’t as good.

James Friedman

Owlchemy Labs creates a couple of tech demos and win developer of the year?

JTD

I havent played much of the titles in Best Online but I would have thought hover junkers should be in there, the interactions in that game just blew my mind.

craylon

with so many categories I think there should be one more : sports/ fitness games
Imho stuff like audioshield, racket nx, eleven, paddle up, quivr that are frequently used for workouts are an important part of VR

mirak

To me you forgot iRacing in “Racing Games”, and Hover Junkers in “Online Games” and “Shooters”.

Hover Junkers is probably the most polished VR experience in all games catégories.
iRacing had to sell a lot of headsets, and Project Cars is so badly optimised it should be dropped of that list.

Adderstone VR

I just think that handling this entirely internally was a big opportunity missed.
I was really hoping you guys would recognise your readers a bit more…

This was a great opportunity to give your readers a quick questionnaire to fill out, learn more about your readers, find out what platform/s they have and what games they enjoy.

UploadVR is a great source of VR information but in all honesty your site would not mean anything without having readers, and in these you really did ignore us. You have a community here, embrace that and use us, otherwise you’re just another news site.

mirak

You really must not have played obduction at all to take it over the gallery.